Tuesday, November 17, 2015

International Flair!

The last few days have been hard. The icy talons of terrorism have attempted to rip Paris asunder and that's caught the attention of the US in ways that other attacks have not. What action to take and when and how are questions that have yet to be answered, but I suspect that we've entered a whole new chapter in the "War on Terror" and wars are never clean-cut and upright as we'd like to think.

So, in the meantime, three movies to consider.

First up, the new James Bond action flick,SPECTRE. James Bond has always been about undeclared wars - espionage as a less-bloody substitute for Flanders Field. I've enjoyed Daniel Craig as Bond - he's brought a certain weariness to the role and, if his Bond isn't quite as superhuman as previous models, he's also more realistic while still retaining elements of the "gee, wow!" variety. For me, Skyfall is still the high-water mark of the Bond films, but SPECTRE is quite respectable. (Should that be "re-spectre-ble"?? No. That won't do.)

I have a suspicion that pre-production on a Bond film must involve a meeting of the higher-ups who say, "All right, then. Where do we want to visit under the guise of filming this time?" SPECTRE has some lovely scenery in it, beginning with a massive Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico. All sorts of hijinks ensue and Bond winds up saving the day. Honestly, if you like Bond films, you'll love this one. If you don't, you won't.

Next, the "didn't we see this happen live?" movie The 33. This dramatization of the 2010 Chilean miner rescue had a number of hurdles to overcome. The world watched this happen (it's estimated that one billion - yes, with a "b" - watched at least part of this event), so the director was going to have to make us forget that we knew the outcome. It's an international cast and Mexican-born director Patricia Riggen insisted the actors speak English as well as Spanish with a Chilean accent. The real-life leader of the trapped miners, Mario Sepulveda (played with intensity by Antonio Banderas) served as supervisor of the extras on the film and several other miners had production roles as well. The film features and international cast including American James Brolin (it's a small role, but he plays it with relish), Frenchwoman Juliette Binoche (who plays Maria Segovia, whose kid brother is one of the trapped miners), and Irish Gabriel Byrne as the chief engineer trying to free the miners. This is a movie that gets faith right - I've complained loudly about the low-quality of many "faith-based" movies in which nonbelievers as well as the faithful are cardboard cutouts. In The 33, faith is an integral part of the miners' lives - you see it in the shrine at the mouth of the mining shaft, the rosaries most of the men wear, the prayers that are offered up by family members, and so on. It's just there, so it doesn't have to be remarked upon. While the film takes dramatic license with a number of events (and people!) to fit 69 days into 2 hours, it contains some lovely scenes, including one in which the trapped miners hallucinate eating their favorite foods with their loved ones as a Bellini aria soars upward. The 33 says some wonderful, lyrical things about family, love, and tough times drawing people closer. I say go see it. If for no other reason, it was the last complete film James Horner (Avatar, Titanic, Braveheart, Aliens and more than 150 more) scored prior to his death earlier this year.

And it contains this bit of wisdom: "You're going to hug her and cry like a baby. You'll forgive her for everything she's ever done and you'll pray to God that she forgives you."

Last, one from the vaults. Jean Renoir's (yes, the son of the Impressionist painter who liked pretty places and prettier people) anti-war film from 1937, La Grande Illusion.So much has been written about this film that I'm only going to hit the highlights. It's a war film without combat. It's the first film selected to be part of the prestigious Criterion Collection. It was the first foreign film to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. It indirectly caused the Cannes Film Festival to come into existence. (Really. When the film had to share top prize at the Venice Film Festival with Reifenstahl's hymn to Nazism Olympia, organizers thought there had to be a better way. Oh, and the film didn't get the original top prize at the Venice festival, since the Mussolini Cup (what?!?!) couldn't very well be given to a film that was banned in Italy.)

La Grande Illusion takes on the notions of class and a vanishing way of combat. Fighter pilots tended to be officers and officers tended to be aristocrats, so there are touches of civility in the decidedly uncivil occupation of war - for instance, the Germans send a lush memorial wreath to the French in a gesture of honoring a fallen enemy that is downright Klingon in its heart, if not its tone. What characters have in common has far more to do with their calling and class than their nationality. It's truly a film that film lovers should see, for La Grande Illusion is the beginning of what can be called humanist cinema.

Yes, trust me - I know that the Breaking Bad finale was last night - fear not, thoughts on that are coming for "Walter White Wednesday...

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Look, I'm flattered if you read something here and like it enough to want to want to rip it off. Or even if you dislike it enough to want to rip it apart. In either case, the content of this blog is mine - I'm responsible for it and you are not to use it without first obtaining permission from me.

Copyright. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.

It really is - see Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

K. Dale Koontz

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Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.